Although it sounds odd to say it, I often think that loons have considerably more patience and perspective than I do. Perhaps because I cover so many different territories, and because a year can go by between my visits to any one territory, my brain perceives that time is passing quickly there, and nothing is changing. This sometimes leads to frustration and overgeneralization. If I find a failed nest in June of one year and again during a May visit to the same territory the next year, I throw up my hands and conclude that the pair there is wasting their time. If on two separate visits fourteen months apart I find two intruders then three more intruders on a lake, I am apt to grumble (sotto voce): “This pair has intruder problems.” If two visits eleven months apart happen both to fall on weekends when many anglers are on the water, I become excessively concerned that the pair on the lake will soon fall prey to fishing entanglement. I suppose I am not the only person to rush to such conclusions based on fragmentary observations.

So it was almost a year ago, when I reflected upon the plight of an ABJ (adult banded as a juvenile) that had taken to stalking the Blue Lake-West territory. As you will see if you reread that post, I had grown pessimistic about the chances of that young female, “White-Green”, ever winning a breeding position on the Blue-West. White-Green, a ten year-old from Franklin Lake in Forest County, has lived for some years on Blue. She had challenged the Blue-West female for ownership at least twice that we witnessed — once in 2014, when she was only five, and once again just last year — and failed to evict the older bird on both occasions. It seemed to me that she had set her sights on gaining a breeding slot on one of the two territories on Blue and had perhaps forsaken all other possibilities. Having seen her fail twice to supplant the Blue-West female, I began to fret that White-Green would never settle.

White-Green, as it turned out, was playing the long game. She ignored the negative vibe from a grey-haired, middle-aged canoeist who visited her lake from time to time and waited. She watched for half a decade as the Blue-Southeast pair reared four chicks to fledging and the Blue-West pair raised three chicks….and waited. She witnessed the violent male battle and accompanying infanticide at Blue-Southeast in 2016, failed to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to land a breeding slot, yet waited still more. Six Mays came and went without any sign that White-Green might end her quest and finally breed. But two days ago, Elaina, Evelyn, and Tarryn found White-Green foraging near the nest platform with the Blue-West male as if doing so was the most normal thing in the world. The old Blue-West female, a 20-year-old hatched on Virgin Lake and White-Green’s former nemesis, was nowhere to be found. (We presume that, having been evicted from her position, she was cowering somewhere on this large lake, hoping to avoid White-Green.) So White-Green’s patience has finally been rewarded. Loons’ rigid, keratinized bills prevent them from ever smiling, but I have a sense that White-Green would have been doing so, if her anatomy had allowed it.